Free from Veronica's sadistic clutches until the next morning, he had wandered down to the dining hall on the ground floor in search of breakfast. While the hall had been empty, there were still the remnants of breakfast sitting there. For a moment, he considered whether she should be there, but a loud rumble from his stomach convinced him to stay.

With the papers Christine had given him set out on the table beside him, he scanned through them while he ate. The majority of them were just notes about where things were located in the tower. A set of tower rules, with his schedule making up the rest. According to this, he had a lesson with Veronica every morning except for one. His afternoons were split between two different teachers, one on the fourth floor and one on the eighteenth.

From the notes about the tower, those were only two of more than twenty floors dedicated to classrooms. A series of four floors, from the eighth to the twelfth, had been set aside for student accommodation. Olivia had told him about the library once. Spread over four floors, it made up the early twenties. Christine's office, he saw, was also noted on the twenty-seventh floor. Every floor above that was listed as restricted. That must have been where the members of The Dawn lived.

When he had finished eating, he gathered up the papers again, tucking them back inside the envelope and storing them in one of the cloak's deep pockets. With a glance at the clock that hung on the side wall of the hall, its huge pendulum swinging quietly, it revealed that it had only just gone nine. He had three hours to kill before lunch. Deciding against going in search of Cassandra, he set off in the direction of the library, intent on exploring some of the other floors along the way. From the list, they had all been designated for something except the one below the library.

For the most part, the corridors were empty. It wasn't until he was only a couple of floors below the library that he saw someone. Heading down the stairs in the opposite direction from him was Ellen. If he hadn't seen the small smile cross her lips when she saw the burns on his wrists, he would have thought that she hadn't seen him at all. She didn't offer him any words, though, passing him in silence and disappearing down the stairs.

The smile Ellen had given him was still firmly imprinted in his mind as he reached the nineteenth floor. It was a moment before he realised that it was a lot darker on this floor than any of the others. Unlike the other floors, there was only one door about halfway down the corridor. Making a mental note to visit the library afterwards, Lewis stepped off the staircase, heading towards the door with a cautious glance over his shoulder. There was no one around.

Like all the other doors he had come across, this one was also a heavy wooden one. Other than a slight drop in the temperature, there was nothing else notable about it. Pausing, he listened for any sounds coming from inside the room.

When he was met only by silence, he turned the handle gently, easing the door open quietly in case there was anyone inside. He hadn't been in the tower long, but what he saw on the other side of the door he definitely hadn't been expecting. The room inside was filled with plants and small trees, and a cool breeze was blowing in his face. Christine had said that they had to produce everything they needed at the tower. He guessed he should have been expecting to find something like this somewhere, but it was still a sight to see.

Stepping into the garden, he shut the door behind him. It turned out that he had just been quick enough when a chicken shot out of the undergrowth, making a break for freedom. As soon as it saw him, it scurried off, disappearing into the bushes on the other side of the path. He definitely hadn't been expecting to find chickens wandering around the tower. Putting it aside, he wandered down the well-trodden path, exploring the garden.

Lewis was so absorbed by all the peculiar fruits, the majority of which seemed to be brightly coloured, that he didn't hear the quiet voices until he was standing on the edge of a small, neatly trimmed lawn. On the grass were two people, both of them looking up at his arrival.

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'Lewis? What are you doing here?' Olivia asked, tucking her hair behind one ear. Sitting opposite her was the man in his sixties that he had seen sitting alone at the student table the night before.

'I'm sorry, I didn't realise anyone was in here. I was just exploring,' he said.

'It's alright. Shouldn't you be in class, though?'

'Veronica, let me go early,' he replied.

'You got Veronica?' she demanded, a look of shock on her face. Even the man sitting opposite her winced slightly.

'What's wrong with that?' he asked.

Getting to her feet, Olivia walked over to him, taking his hand as she rolled up the sleeve to reveal the red skin where the handcuffs had burned him. 'No, she's got you as well,' she sighed. 'This is Nathan; she used to teach him as well.'

As if his introduction had been an instruction, the man looked up, pulling back the sleeves of his own cloak. Almost every inch of his arms was littered with scars. 'Veronica did that?' Silently, Nathan nodded. 'How can she get away with this?'

'Every teacher has their own techniques. As long as they get results, the methods they use tend to get overlooked,' Olivia explained.

'You don't, do you?' he asked worriedly, suddenly wondering if he knew her at all.

'No, of course not,' she said quickly. 'I prefer a freer approach. There are some things that work better with encouragement than punishment for failure.'

'I thought for a moment you might be the same as her,' Lewis said.

'So did I when I first met her,' Nathan said quietly. 'I was wrong.'

'Let me have a look at your schedule,' Olivia said. 'If you have it with you.'

Pulling the envelope from his pocket, he riffled through the papers, looking for the schedule he had been given. When he found it, he handed it to her. After a moment, her face dropped. 'What is it?' he asked, part of him unsure if he wanted to know the answer.

'You've got a pretty bad draw,' she sighed.

'Who else have I got?'

'Veronica every morning and Ellen on three afternoons,' she said. 'That's a horrible combination. At least you, Edward, though; he's nice.'

'Ellen isn't going to hold back because she knows me, is she?' he asked hopefully.

'After everything that happened on the way here, I highly doubt it,' she sighed. 'Hopefully she will be fair. That isn't one of her most prominent traits, though, I'm afraid.'

'I should get used to this then,' he said, gesturing to the burns on his wrists.

'Hold on,' she said, turning to her bag, which was lying on the ground. Rummaging in it, it was a moment before she straightened up again, a small bottle in her hand. 'Take this with you.'

'What is it?' he asked, eyeing it warily as she uncorked the bottle. Putting a finger over the top, she tipped it upside down for a moment. Taking the finger away again, she rubbed the liquid on the burnt skin.

'This will help the burns heal quicker,' Olivia said as she took his other wrist, smearing the thick, clear liquid on it. 'Put it on before you go to bed and when you wake up. It will only take a couple of days, but it might leave some scars.'

'Is this what Nathan used?'

'It helps a lot,' he said before Olivia could reply. 'The burns would normally scar anyway; you might as well take some of the pain out of the healing process if you can.'

'Thanks,' said Lewis, making a mental note not to encourage Veronica to use the chains again. He didn't want his arms to end up looking like Nathan's.

'You should get going before someone finds you in here,' Olivia said as she handed him the bottle. 'I know you were only exploring, but it would be best if you didn't wander around the tower too much. As you've seen, there are members like Veronica and Ellen who aren't so lenient with their students.'

With a nod, he slipped the corked bottle into his pocket with the envelope of papers from Christine. It was then that he realised that Olivia was still on his schedule. 'I almost forgot my schedule,' he said, gesturing to the piece of paper in her hand.

'Leave it with me for now. When I speak to Christine after my lesson, I'll see if there is anything I can do about your teachers,' she said, tucking it into her own pocket instead. 'I'll get it back to you at lunch.'

'Thank you,' he said gratefully. 'He didn't know how much sway she would hold with the headmistress, but it was worth a shot. Anything was worth a try if it meant that he could lessen the torture he was sure that Ellen was going to put him through. Outside the tower, she had been partly reliant on him to get by. Now they were on her ground. With a nod to Olivia and Nathan, he backed away, following the narrow path back to the door, the mysteries of the room still swirling in his head. There was still so much that was unexplained.